Quotes by Paul Valery

Love is being stupid together.

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

Politics is the art of preventing people from sticking their noses in things that are properly their business.

The trouble with out times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.